•  18
    Inheriting Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist epistemology
    Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (13). 2015.
    In this paper, I begin to construct an inheritance map for the epistemological insights in Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought. An inheritance map attempts to take stock of what one has been given in a particular project and what one inherits as work yet to do. Here I outline that Black Feminist Thought demonstrates that knowledge has no proper subject, while leaving a project to imagine black feminist epistemology outside of ascriber dynamics.
  •  38
    XIII—Dear Octavia Butler
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (3): 327-346. 2023.
    One of Octavia Butler’s common sites of exploration concerns the impact of parenting on her main characters. She appeared to locate reproduction and child-rearing as parts of human life with great potentials for transformed futures. From a perspective of intergenerational survival, that hope appears perfectly reasonable. In this letter to Butler, I put the goal of intergenerational survival into question as an existential mandate by querying its relationship to gestative capture. Gestative captu…Read more
  •  108
    Environmental Justice, Unknowability and Unqualified Affectability
    with Kyle Whyte
    Ethics and the Environment 18 (2): 55-79. 2013.
    Environmental justice seeks fairness in how environmental burdens and risks are visited on poor people, women, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, minorities, and citizens of developing countries. It also concerns whether members of these same groups have fair access to environmental goods such as urban green spaces, forested areas, and clean water. Environmental goods extend, also, to opportunities to benefit from enterprises such as tourism and green infrastructure (Shrader-Frechette 200…Read more
  •  360
    On the Costs of Socially Relevant Philosophy Papers: A Reflection
    Journal of Social Philosophy 53 (4): 454-472. 2019.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  1350
    This piece contextualizes a discussion by liminal feminists on the identifiers ‘women of color’ and ‘Third World women’ that emerged from some uncomfortable and constructive conversations at the 2015 FEAST conference. I focus on concerns of marginalization and gatekeeping that are far too often reiterated within the uneasy racial dynamics among feminist philosophers.
  •  119
    On the Politics of Coalition
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (2): 1-16. 2017.
    In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of…Read more
  •  30
    Moi, féministe noire : Pour qui je me prends?
    Diogène 235 (3/4): 109-129. 2012.
    In this paper, I offer a partial picture of my conceptual location as a US black feminist, professional philosopher and, by doing so, illustrate one of the ways Africana philosophy is being shaped and engaged. I offer a portrait of my conceptual location by identifying a value shared by some ‘anti-theory’ black feminists and some Africana professional philosophers in the US that ultimately recommends a consistent engagement in black feminist/philosophical praxis.
  •  1252
    Epistemic Oppression, Resistance, and Resurgence
    with Nora Berenstain, Julieta Paredes, Elena Ruíz, and Noenoe K. Silva
    Contemporary Political Theory 21 (2): 283-314. 2022.
    Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual a…Read more
  •  181
    1984: A Love Letter
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 28-46. 2021.
    Dear Kris, I know you will read this letter if it ever manages to get to you. You like reading. I’m not sure what you’ll think of it though. I just know I had to make this attempt to talk to you about the summer of 1984. There are some things you and I come to know in the summer of 1984 that will take us 35 years to learn to talk about. They were not an easy 35 years. And I want to help change that.
  •  61
    Another Letter Long Delayed
    with Ayanna De’ Vante Spencer
    Philosophical Topics 46 (2): 51-69. 2018.
    This paper is an effort toward conceptual transparency around toxic inclusivity in academic feminism and the kinds of care it lacks toward, what amounts to, bad knowledge production practices. In this paper, we claim that some of the forms of reductive inclusion that ought to be avoided are epistemologically unsound practices that propagate disempowering, false, and/or distortive messages about targets of inclusion. We take reductive inclusion to be inclusion that treats the targets of inclusion…Read more
  •  36
    On the Way to Decolonization in a Settler Colony: Re-introducing Black Feminist Identity Politics
    AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 14 (3): 190-199. 2018.
    In this paper, I explain Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is ‘on the way’ to settler decolonization in a US context for the fact that it makes demands that we attend to our “originating” stories and, in doing so, 1) generate potential for difficult coalitions for decolonization in settler colonial USA and 2) promoting a range of refusals (Simpson 2014) that aid in resisting the completion of settler colonialism in North America, which is still an uncompleted project. Ultimatel…Read more
  •  293
    Tales from an apostate
    Philosophical Issues 29 (1): 69-83. 2019.
    Here I outline an often under-appreciated position within Anglo-analytic epistemology, that of the apostate to operative metaphilosophical constraints. To help identify and promote awareness of metaphilosophical apostacy, here, I describe the form of metaphilosophical apostacy that I practice in Anglo-analytic epistemology (AAE). My apostasy with respect to AAE begins with significant, metaphilosophical divergences or deep senses of incongruence. A metaphilosophical divergence, on my account, re…Read more
  •  276
    Accumulating Epistemic Power
    Philosophical Topics 46 (1): 129-154. 2018.
    On December 3, 2014, in a piece entitled “White America’s Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity Is So Skewed,” Brittney Cooper criticizes attempts to deem Black rage at state-sanctioned violence against Black people “unreasonable.” In this paper, I outline a problem with epistemology that Cooper highlights in order to explore whether beliefs can wrong. My overall claim is there are difficult-to-defeat arguments concerning the “legitimacy” of police slayings against Black people that ar…Read more
  •  189
    Distinguishing Knowledge Possession and Knowledge Attribution: The Difference Metaphilosophy Makes
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2): 475-482. 2018.
  •  97
    On intellectual diversity and differences that may not make a difference
    Ethics and Education 13 (1): 123-140. 2018.
    Calls for diversity in higher education have been ongoing for, at least, a century. Today, the diversity movement in higher education is in danger of being co-opted in the US by a move to make ‘intellectual diversity,’ i.e. the diversity of political opinion, on par with the cultural and historical diversity that one finds within differently racialized populations. Intellectual diversity is thought to track different modes of thinking between conservatives and progressives that need policy inter…Read more
  •  99
    Theorizing Jane Crow, Theorizing Unknowability
    Social Epistemology 31 (5): 417-430. 2017.
    In this essay, I offer an epistemological accounting of Pauli Murray’s idea of Jane Crow dynamics. Jane Crow, in my estimation, refers to clashing supremacy systems that provide targets for subordination while removing grounds to demand recourse for said subordination. As a description of an oppressive state, it is an idea of subordination with an epistemological engine. Here, I offer an epistemological reading of Jane Crow dynamics by theorizing three imbricated conditions for Jane Crow, i.e. t…Read more
  •  1084
    How is this Paper Philosophy?
    Comparative Philosophy 3 (1): 3-29. 2012.
    This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professi…Read more
  •  200
    Well, yes and no: A reply to Priest
    Comparative Philosophy 3 (2): 10-15. 2012.
  •  1401
    Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by…Read more
  •  81
    It's not that we haven't always been here, since there was a here. It is that the letters of our names have been scrambled when they were not totally erased, and our fingertips upon the handles of history have been called the random brushings of birds. (Lorde , ix) Because… [racialized peoples'] dehumanization has not been successful, conceiving of self and others and their exercise of themselves both against dehumanization and toward liberatory possibilities has meant living double lives backed…Read more
  •  185
    Word to the Wise: Notes on a Black Feminist Metaphilosophy of Race
    Philosophy Compass 11 (2): 69-74. 2016.
    It is not uncommon to ask a race and gender-based question of a philosopher of race, only to hear ‘I do race, not gender’. To the ears of many Black feminists, this sounds, to be frank, utterly foolish. Here, I identify three metaphilosophical assumptions, i.e. the disaggregation, fundamentality and transcendental assumptions, that aid in underwriting the ability to use the statement, ‘I do race, not gender’, as a means for avoiding gender-based questions in ‘race talks’. Then, I gesture to a re…Read more
  •  79
    Curious Disappearances: Affectability Imbalances and Process‐Based Invisibility
    with Marita Gilbert
    Hypatia 29 (4): 873-888. 2014.
    In this paper, we analyze the recent public scandal involving Nafissatou Diallo and Dominique Strauss-Kahn to offer an account of the role affectability imbalances play in process-based invisibility. Process-based invisibilities, in this paper, refer to predictable narrative gaps within public narratives that can be aptly described as disappearances. We demonstrate that compromised, complex social identities, maladjusted webs of reciprocity, and a failure to fully appreciate basic affectability …Read more